Basilisk (The Korsak Brothers #2)(63)

I pointed at him. “You. Go. How’d you find me?”

He stared at me. I remembered when he used to have to look down to meet my eyes. Now that we were the same height, the stare was somehow more intense and as ferociously amber as one of those Rabid Zombie Werewolves.

Shit. I’d been so busy explaining what had happened that I’d forgotten how it had happened.

“We’re on the run and you were shot in the head when you went outside without me,” he said, his voice unnaturally calm for what I knew of my brother.

“A rubber bullet. He might as well have hit me with a Tic Tac.” That wasn’t quite true, but downplaying it was my best hope.

“When you went outside without me.”

“You were asleep. You needed the rest,” I pointed out.

“Without me.”

I opened my mouth, found nothing and no words that were going to turn this around, and closed it.

Stefan apparently approved of the move and answered my question. “I found you because I woke up when your friend Peter the Pied Piper of killer kids called on that phone he left you.” I’d kept it in case he did. It was too cheap to be GPS enabled and he wanted us to find him anyway. “When that happened and I discovered you were gone, I used my own tracker.” He bared his teeth in a savage smile. “They’re like iPhones, right? Everyone has to have one.”

“Your own tracker?” Despite the smile he’d used only against people he was about to beat up or shoot, I was curious—guilty as hell too, but curious. “What’d you track? I know you didn’t plant anything in me when I wasn’t looking.”

“Your rat. One day when you were at work, I took him to the vet and had him chipped. I know it’d break your damn heart if he ran off.” His smile was no less pissed off.

No, what he knew was that at least fifty percent of the time Godzilla was with me and if we ever had to run again, it would be one hundred percent of the time. He’d outthought me when I hadn’t had a clue he was thinking about having to run at all. “That is devious as hell. That is Institute devious,” I said with reluctant admiration.

“You bet your ass it is.” This time the smile disappeared. Lines bracketed the side of his mouth and I could tell he was more tired now than when I’d “helped” him sleep. “What did you do, Michael?” There was no Misha now. He knew what I’d done. I’d used my genetic abilities on him, though I was doing it for him. It was a violation, a huge one. That deserved my Institute name. “I would’ve woken up when you opened the door. After the mob, after what you and I lived through before, I would’ve woken up and we both know it.”

I was an ass. I hadn’t meant to be. I’d tried to do a good thing, but we were in a situation where there were no good things, only the right things. I hadn’t done the right thing. I’d been careless. “You were tired. I was only going to be out there two minutes. I wanted you to be able to sleep. I thought I was helping, but clearly I f*cked up.”

He stared at me for another second. “Fucked up doesn’t begin to cover it.” He headed back to the SUV. “Let’s go. We have to get rid of your girlfriend somehow and get back to finding Peter and his goddamn posse. And we have Raynor back on our asses. I assume he’s not as dead as we’d hoped or you would’ve told me.”

I’d disappointed him. There hadn’t been a time Stefan had been disappointed in me—until now. I felt as if I’d been kicked in the stomach, a kick much worse than the ones Ariel doled out. I would’ve rather he went back to being angry with me. “Stefan,” I said quietly, “I’m sorry. I’m. . . .” I was what? What else was there to say? He’d thought he’d lost a brother again and if my healing abilities hadn’t quadrupled since I was seventeen and if he hadn’t chipped Godzilla, he might have. He was right. Fucked up didn’t cover it and neither did “sorry.” Nothing did.

I walked in silence behind him. I had issues. Anyone raised at the Institute would, but I hadn’t felt this worthless and guilty in my life. Each step I took felt mired in quicksand. He was the sole family I had and I’d let him down.

Where was my genius now?

Stefan exhaled, stopped, turned; then he hooked an arm around my neck and squeezed. “Still your brother, Misha. I love the hell out of you, jackass. We’ll write this off as lesson learned, all right? Now, get your girlfriend. Apparently she has a black belt in yoga but takes as long as a ninety-year-old woman to pee.”

My shoulders slumped in relief at his willingness to forgive. “Why is it men piss and women pee?”

“Okay, loving you a little less,” he snorted. “Go.”

I started to, but paused. “Wait. You said Peter called. When you answered instead of me, what did he say to you?”

He shook his head. “You don’t need to know. You tried to do something for my own good. I know this is for your own good. So go get the girlfriend.” He checked his gun, replaced it, and covered it with his shirt. He didn’t know he’d done it. The move was completely automatic, caused by the memory of what Peter had told him. Peter said he was curious about me. Peter was not curious about Stefan in the slightest except in how many varied ways he could dispose of him.

That wasn’t going to happen.

“Go without you? What happened to lesson learned?” I leaned against the SUV beside him. “I think I’ll stick around. ‘Bubba’ can hurry her up.”